


Transformers (2007) - What really happened I swear

by mydarksidelovesthis



Series: I don't like to call it Transformers Abridged, but that's basically what it is [1]
Category: Transformers (2007)
Genre: (But doesn't admit it), Abridged, Action, Bumblebee is bad with words, Funny, Gen, Humans are not intelligent, Humor, Megatron is bad at math, Parody, Science Fiction, Starscream speaks the truth, not evil just misunderstood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydarksidelovesthis/pseuds/mydarksidelovesthis
Summary: Sam puts those old glasses from his grandfather on ebay and after some bid-war the final price is ten million dollars?? But then ebay stops the auction because of an obvious scam. The angry customer - in form of a police car - visits Sam to complain about the missed shipping and threatens to sue him with his thousand lawyers if he doesn't receive the item he bought. Can this day become even worse?Merci-less rip-off of the first Bay movie, obviously.
Relationships: Sam Witwicky & Bumblebee (Transformers), Sam Witwicky / Mikaela Banes
Series: I don't like to call it Transformers Abridged, but that's basically what it is [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023034
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Transformers (2007) - Was wirklich passiert ist ich schwöre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666527) by [mydarksidelovesthis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydarksidelovesthis/pseuds/mydarksidelovesthis). 



Even before his alarm clock rang, Sam's mother stood by his bed and lovingly woke him up by stroking his hair.

"Mom, what the hell," Sam nagged overslept.

"You gotta go to school, sweetheart."

"I know. Do you see this?" Sam grabbed a round object off his bedside table. "It's called an alarm clock. It's gonna ring in five minutes, see?"

"Well, that's not stopping me from wishing my baby a good morning."

As Judy joyfully scurried back downstairs, Sam rolled his eyes.

"Hurry up or you'll be late," she called.

"I've got three fucking hours to go," Sam moaned annoyingly and slammed the pillow against his own head. His mother was sometimes unbearable.

When he entered the kitchen, things didn't get any better. Judy had just finished making his sandwiches and packed them into a colourful school bag.

"Mom." Sam facepalmed. What a disaster. "I'm sixteen. I can't walk around with this. Everybody will laugh at me."

"But Sam, you are and always will be my little baby."

"You need a dog."

"I don't need a dog. I have you."

Sam was on the verge of losing it. He forced himself to a "Thank you," and ran for the door.

"Text me. Call me when you get there safe," he heard his mother calling after him.

Outside in front of the hedge he turned off, crept through a hole in the fence back into his parents' garden and exchanged the embarrassing child's satchel for a backpack appropriate for his age. In the evening he would exchange it back again as if nothing had happened.

After school Sam rushed outside where his father was waiting in the car to pick him up.

"I have a surprise for you," Ron announced and drove to the site of the Porsche dealer.

"Dad, you're not serious ..." exclaimed Sam, the first word still delighted, but dying to the end as his father drove off the site again.

"It's not." Ron laughed at his joke, long and loud.

"Dad, stop it, it's embarrassing." Sam sulked and gave his father the silent treatment.

The laughter continued, got louder, got chopped off. Ron pulled over to the side of the road. Now Sam realized that the laughter had turned into a kind of gasping fit. The prank was immediately forgotten.

"Dad!" exclaimed Sam in shock. He checked the condition of his old man, who was gasping for breath and grabbing his neck. Not knowing how to help, Sam called 911. "Hang in there, Dad! The ambulance is coming." His father had already turned purple and was writhing powerlessly over the steering wheel, still gasping in a horrible distortion of a laugh.

Sam already heard the siren and jumped out of the car to direct the ambulance to them - but instead of an ambulance, a yellow Camaro pulled up and his mother jumped out and shouted "Surprise! I hope our baby likes it." She almost crushed Sam in her embrace.

Behind him Ron rose from the car - perfectly healthy and still slightly discoloured in the face. "I can't believe you fell for it again. Congratulations on the new car."

Offended, Sam turned to the car and his mood improved. It was a yellow Camaro with rally stripes - not bad at all. Well, the paint was peeling off in places, but it had style. He let himself slide gently into the leather seat. It felt good. Was that really his car or just another stupid prank by his father? Would it fall apart into its individual parts right away? Would it get up and walk away?

Only casually he heard his father also look at the car in surprise and argued with Judy. "Hey, what's that? I ordered the green Porsche." "They didn't have a green Porsche, " she responded, "just this yellow Camaro and a dented police car."

Sam stuck his head out the window. "It's okay, I'm keeping it. It's perfect." Before his father got the idea to return the car.

Sam had another plan for the evening: to pick up Mikaela, the black-haired beauty from his class. She would be at the lake tonight with her gang. Sam just had to get past her boyfriend somehow.

The task moved into the realm of possibility with his fancy new car, but a little money would increase his chances. So Sam took a look at his Ebay account, where he offered his grandfather's old stuff for sale and was quite surprised. The highest bid for the old glasses was already several thousand dollars. Sam nodded self-satisfied - good decision to put them up for sale. This would bring him forward enormously. He imagined himself driving up to the lake with a gold chain and a bundle of banknotes in his hand and Mikaela falling around his neck kissing him. Then, in the next picture, he was lying by the pool in front of his estate while Mikaela, in a tight bikini with a bouncing butt, brought him a drink and their children were playing nearby.

No, Sam, focus. All in good time.

In order not to show up alone at the party by the lake like a total loser, he took his insignificant friend Miles with him, who played no more a role in Sam's life than someone he could take with him when he didn't want to go somewhere alone.

This turned out to be a mistake.

As soon as they got out at the lake - their classmates including Mikaela and her boyfriend Trevis were already there - Miles started to climb a tree.

Sam broke out in a sweat when Trevis came over to him and asked what they were doing there. At that moment the branch Miles was hanging from broke with a dry crack and he fell to the ground, trying to hold on to more branches on the way down, which he dragged with him.

Sam's eyes widened. Jesus, that was so embarrassing. "We came here to fall out of this tree."

Miles moaned in pain, Sam didn't even see an injury except for a few scratches. Everyone was staring at them.

Trevis muttered "idiot" and returned to his gang, announcing the departure. He didn't feel like hanging out where those jerks spoiled his mood.

Sam pulled Miles to his feet, who, as expected, had no problem staying on his feet. He moaned and whined: "Shit! All the girls saw me!" "What did you expect?"

At a distance, Mikaela stood with a charming smile next to the driver's door of Trevis' car and raised her hand to receive the keys. "Let me drive."

Trevis made a dismissive laugh. "You would scratch my paint."

"Scratch"? Mikaela, insulted, tilted her head. "I replaced your brakes last week that you had worn out with your driving style, remember?"

"Come on, I'm sure your dad did it for you."

That was too much. Mikaela left him carelessly with a throwing hand movement and made her way home by foot.

Sam spotted Mikaela and saw his chance. His chest swelled in a victory pose. "I'll drive her home."

"Okay, cool." Miles was about to jump into the passenger seat, but Sam slammed the door in his face before he could. "No thanks. I'll fuck up the rest on my own."

Mikaela accepted Sam's offer to drive her home. For the first time, she seemed to take really notice him.

Sam mentally went through his list of small talk topics to get to know each other, which he had previously prepared. How are you doing? What are you doing? If you were suddenly rich, what would you do with the money? But suddenly he found everything stupid.

That's when she took the floor. "Who are you?" Ouch.

After a brief moment of shock, Sam declared, "We're in the same class. I always let you copy my homework."

"Oh, wait, Jack, right?" Double ouch.

He corrected before it got any more embarrassing. "Sam." She would have plenty of time to learn his name before their wedding.

"Oh, I remember." She smiled conciliatory. "Sam Willkicky."

"Witwicky."

She pulled her shoulders up and pulled her lower lip embarrassingly. Oops. "Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry. I'm afraid I'm a bit preoccupied at school." Sam encouraged her to continue. "I have a weakness for big muscles and sometimes I can't think of anything else. Especially when Trevis is around."

The car rumbled gently along the road and the dry, dusty countryside spread out around them.

"There's nothing I can do about it." Mikaela's hands greedily enclosed an imaginary upper arm of significant volume. "As soon as I see a guy with big muscles, it's all over me and I completely lose my mind." Sam listened with interest and made notes in his mind. Or not just mental notes. "That sun-tanned skin under which tendons move. This prominent vein in the middle of the upper arm when they flex the biceps. Sam, what are you doing?"

Sam steered the car with his elbow, the rest of his upper body turned away from her. Unseen by her, he held a sharpie in his left hand, with which he drew the outlines of his muscles and was about to turn to his upper arm. "Uh, nothing?" His eyes flitted around guiltily, as if caught. "Go on, the biceps vein? Oh, by the way, there's the Breck plain on the right, you can sometimes see some pink swans flying by, it's incredible, isn't it? Maybe we'll get lucky and see some."

"I've never heard of that." Still, she kept a lookout in case there was something to it, and Sam could continue his efforts unobserved.

While she kept talking, Sam kept busy painting on himself. "Those drops of sweat that run down over swollen muscles after exercise. The tendons that move under the skin when he lifts weights." Sam hesitated - how did you paint this?

"And this small wedge-shaped burn scar above his left elbow." Um, what?

"Just the thought of it drives me crazy. Do you understand that, Sam?" He had just finished his work and put his arm in a pose, his hand casually against his head as if to straighten his hair, his arm strained so hard that it burned in his muscles and he felt the force already draining away. Hopefully she looked quickly so that he could give his arm a rest again as soon as possible. "Yes," he said, stretched out to sound as cool as possible.

"Oh Sam", Mikaela hit a tone higher, almost as if she was talking to a child. "You are such a good friend. I'm glad you're not like the others. You remind me that it's what's inside that counts."

She gave up her stakeout and decided to turn back to him. "THERE! There's a swan!" Sam suddenly yelled. As Mikaela turned around, Sam reached back hastily and put on a long top so she wouldn't see this embarrassing scrawl.

Mikaela searched the sky, but saw nothing, or had Sam pointed to the ground? "There's nothing there?" Disappointed, she turned back.

Sam's eyes flitted around guiltily again. "It's already gone. Sorry, I'll tell you earlier next time." That was close.

The rest of the way they talked casually. That felt good. When she got out of the car and Sam looked behind her swinging backside, he daydreamed about their future together again.

No, focus, Ladiesman!

Back home, he checked his Ebay account and stared in amazement. A bidding skirmish had driven the auction price of the glasses up to $10 million, whereupon Ebay had cancelled the auction due to an obvious system error.

Sam's thought bubble, in which the half-naked Mikaela was stretched out on a golden sheet, crumbled under the weight of reality.

It didn't seem long after he had gone to sleep when Sam heard the engine noise of his car outside the window. He jumped up, but the sound remained. In disbelief, he rushed to the window and saw his car leaving the property.

"Daaad!", Sam yelled and could not share his father's humour. He threw a few things over himself, stormed out and followed the sound of the engine on a bicycle.

He called his father on his mobile phone. "Would you grow up and stop this nonsense? Bring me back my car, now."

"Sam, it's the middle of the night," the sleepy voice replied. "What's about your car?"

"Don't play innocent with me."

While Ron remained silent, Sam spotted the Batman symbol in the clouds in the distance. It quickly disappeared again and was replaced by another, a sort of face made of geometric shapes.

"I admit it. I was planning to have the green Porsche picked up again in secret. You would have made such a face, haha."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"But Judy talked me out of it, plus she showed up with the yellow Camaro instead. I don't know, let me ask my contacts."

Sam angrily hung up.

On the phone he hadn't paid attention to where he was going and stopped in front of a scrap yard - this was the last place he had heard the sound of the engine.

While he was still thinking about whether he should look around here, a police car pulled up behind him.

That was fast. Sam ran towards the officer. "Did my father send you? Are you one of his accomplices? I want my car back."

But instead of an answer, suddenly all parts of the vehicle folded into other places in all possible directions, reorganized themselves and - still in the colors of the police car and with some of its parts, like the wheels - it rose as a fifteen feet high robot above Sam's head.

The robot gave Sam a blow that he flew into the wall and bent over him menacingly. "Are you Ladiesman217?"

That was Sam's username on eBay. "Uh, yes?"

"Where's my article? Where is item 321773? I am the highest bidder. Give me the glasses or my friends will spam you with bad reviews and you can throw away your sales career."

"You have to contact to Ebay via the contact form!" Sam screamed in panic, picked himself up and rushed off.

The surprised robot looked at a non-existent point when he checked Sam's statement on the Internet and only came to himself after the boy had already run away.

Somewhere in a distant place, robot beings were exchanging messages with each other. "Why did you send the con with the least amount of social skills to communicate with humans?" "Negative. Berserker was not available." "Oh."

Since he had left the bike behind, Sam fled back home on foot. He stopped in surprise when he spotted Mikaela strutting along the roadside.

Her hair was disheveled and her skin was shining with sweat.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked and stopped in mid-motion, slipping a few more inches like a comic.

"Oh ..." Mikaela looked back in the direction she had come from. Didn't Trevis live somewhere near there? "I ... I didn't expect to see you here at this hour. What are you doing here?"

The stomping of heavy footsteps interrupted Sam's thought process and he hastily declared, "There's an eBay customer complaining about his missing shipment, see?" He pointed to the back, where the police car in its robot form came running at them.

Sam grabbed Mikaela's hand and wanted to escape with her, just as his Camaro pulled up, stopped in a slippery curve and its door fell open, ready for boarding.

No one was at the wheel. Sam's thought was: Damn, this is a robot too. But they had no choice.

He pulled Mikaela into the car with him, who let it happen with slight confusion and the car raced off with the two teenagers.


	2. Chapter 2

In the street where the Camaro stopped and let the two teenagers get out, Sam heard several dull thumps along with approaching engine noises, followed by the murmur of a male voice. The source was quickly cleared up when a blue truck with red flames turned into the road and grazed a parked car in the bend. "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry." More vehicles before and behind them entered the road, as Sam remarked with a slightly queasy feeling.

The blue and red truck stopped just before the two people. Then first its radiator grill collapsed, then the other parts in an apparent tangle that Sam could not follow and a large robot rose from the vehicle parts.

Around it the other vehicles did it alike. Each one transformed in its own unique way and in the end, each vehicle stood there as a robot.

The blue and red robot sank down on one knee to talk to the teenagers at eye level. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of META - Maschines for the Equal Treatment of All."

The yellow robot transformed from an ambulance interrupted the introduction. "Don't make it too complicated. Adapt your explanations to the capacities of the natives."

Optimus nodded in gratitude for the tip and turned to continue. "We are living robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron." He pointed to a gray, agile robot "This is my first Lieutenant - Jazz."

The grey one put down a few dance steps and threw himself on a parked car, earning him a rebuking look from his leader. "Bumblebee, I hope it's important enough that we stopped our game of asteroid skittles for this."

A black, heavily armed robot agreed. "Yes. I was winning." "You were not. I was." "No?"

"Guys, please. We'll continue the interrupted game after our mission." Optimus seemed slightly embarrassed by the misbehavior of his minions, but tried to keep his cool and continued the round of introductions. "This is my weapons expert: Ironhide. He's called Ironhide because ..." But his gaze hit nowhere. "Hm. He was there a second ago." He looked around, but you could look for a long time for someone called Ironhide, so he gave up pretty quickly.

Next he pointed to the ex-Camaro. "You already know your guardian." Bumblebee, also transformed into his robotic mode, made a few squeaks. He tugged at Sam's clothes, gave him a few nudges to make him stand up straight and stroked his hair. Sam slightly ashamed felt reminded of his mother.

"My Medical Officer: Ratchet."

The medic asked Bumblebee, "Is your voice processor damaged again? I thought I had fixed it." He directed a laser beam at Bumblebee's throat area, but Bee defensively lifted the servos so they were blocking the beam. A bright female singing voice came out of his radio. "Everything's gonna be alright." Ratchet, suspiciously narrowing the optics, made the laser beam disappear.

When everything was quiet, Optimus raised his voice again. "Our association META fights against discrimination against species because of their level of development. Now we have come here to protect humans from the Decepticons."

"Hey, wait a minute." Sam raised his hands when he interrupted Optimus. "We are highly developed."

Optimus hesitated for a moment and diplomatically replied, "Of course you are." He turned the helmet over to all his people. "Right, guys?" The other bots agreed with him, but Sam was not convinced.

"Let me show you something." Optimus pressed a button on his helmet and projected 3-D cinema of an ice cave into the area. Sam recognized his great-great-grandfather, the explorer Archibald Witwicky, who was exploring a giant, super-ugly robot that was frozen inside the cave.

Archibald reached out a hand to one of the robot's long, claw-shaped fingers. "Don't touch it," he complained, but Archibald showed him his middle finger and took off his glove to leave fingerprints on the clean, smooth outer armor of the robot.

A blinding light flashed out of the robot's optical sensors and hit the discoverer, who took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Oh. I can see sharply again," he called joyfully.

The projection disappeared and Optimus continued his flashback orally. "In Megatron's embarrassing attempt to kill Archibald with his navigation system, the coordinates of the Allspark were engraved on his glasses."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Sam interrupted him again. "If Megatron and Captain Archibald were alone in the ice cave, how do you know that? How can you show me these pictures?"

Instead of an answer, Optimus took a long pause, as if he was putting his words together. Ratchet interjected, "In this primitive language, your explanation sounds so long winded."

Eventually, Optimus resorted to explaining that this was not the point of his explanation and continued, "Megatron intends to destroy your planet. We need your grandfather's glasses to stop him."

"What does the glasses have to do with this?" Well, they had said Megatron had engraved the coordinates of his destination there, for whatever reason, and that destination was the Allspark. How could they know that? And even if that was the case, what made them so sure that the Allspark was still in the same place? And if they were so smart, why didn't they go straight to the Allspark?

The medic rolled annoyed with his optical sensors. "I told you not to complicate things."

"I did my best. What part do you not understand, Samuel James Witwicky?"

"Just call me Sam, please."

"They're so primitive, they even shorten their names." The medic crossed his arms in front of his breastplate.

"Stop calling us primitive!"

Sam turned back to Optimus. "Um, can I listen to both sides first? You know, make up my own mind, with my highly evolved intellect and all?"

"No!" Optimus raged up. "Megatron is evil and will lie to you and confuse you. Bring us the glasses and we'll take care of the details."

Mikaela took Sam aside and whispered, "Just give them the glasses, what can they do with them anyway?"

So Sam agreed and explained that the glasses were at his house, so they went to get them.

Even before Bumblebee transformed for departure, Sam stepped up to him. "Tell me the truth. Do you think we're highly developed?"

Bumblebee tapped himself on the throat in reply, the "broken" voice processor, then transformed and waited with open doors for the two teenagers to enter.

"Sure, how convenient for you, isn't it?"

The radio played: "But it's nothing ever easy, and the truth is never straight."

Back in his room Sam booted the computer, which gave him a surprised look from Mikaela. "What? I have to take down the glasses from eBay." She just shook her head disapprovingly. "You know, you can start searching in the meantime, okay?"

While Mikaela started her search under Sam's bed, she opened a box full of porn magazines. Oops, she shouldn't have looked here. She put it back and pretended not to have seen anything.

Then Sam suddenly groaned in horror. "Oh, no, they didn't do this."

Mikaela, in astonishment, came to see what he had discovered: "What's wrong? Oh, my God."

Sam's eBay account had sold three items. But he had received 343 one-star ratings, all submitted in the last 24 hours. Quickly Mikaela looked over them. The comments said all sorts of things about him. One of them claimed that they had ordered a compass but got a bobcat that had scratched their face. One person said that Sam was responsible for Bush. Sam's inbox was full of demands for repayment that couldn't be met because of a lack of money on his bank account.

"I'm ruined. Destroyed. My life is over." Sam was pulling his hair out.

From outside, Optimus Prime shone his spotlight into the room. "Sam, can you find the glasses? Hurry.

Sam jumped up and ran to the window to talk to the leader of the Autobots. "Look at this, eBay's making me give the Decepticons the glasses, what am I going to do, they're destroying my life. Can you do something about that?"

Optimus sighed. "I am truly sorry, but we cannot afford an lawyer."

"Then give me a minute to figure something out, okay? Just give me a minute." Sam raised his index finger to symbolize the minute, closed the window and drew the curtains so he could despair on the floor of his room without the Autobots seeing him. Shit, what was he gonna do.

Mikaela was just kneeling down next to him, to comfort him and to tell him that it wasn't all that bad - many people were heavily in debt and lived a comfortable life - when the door swung open and Sam's parents were standing there.

Sam raised his head. Oh no. The two parties stared at each other for a moment.

Until Mikaela was the first to react, stood up and reached out a hand to Sam's parents. "Hi, I'm Mikaela."

"Oh, you're pretty. Isn't she pretty, Ron?" Judy glanced briefly at her husband, then back at the girl. "When are you going to be married? Oh, I'm so looking forward to having grandchildren. Wait." Sam's mother left the room.

"No, Mom," Sam moaned, but it was too late, he could hear her walking up the stairs.

"Um, well actually", Mikaela carefully explained to the father, while looking after the mother, "we are just good friends."

He nodded slightly annoyed. "That's just the way she is, my Judy. Once she gets going, she's hard to stop. I'm afraid it's going to be a bit unpleasant."

Which meant: more unpleasant than it already was. Sam's mother returned with a box that she put on Sam's desk and started unpacking. "I've kept all of Sam's baby clothes for this case."

"No, Mom." But Sam was ignored.

She pulled out a small article of clothing. "Here, in this pink onesie he always looked so cute. We had no money to buy new clothes."

"Mom, that's enough!" Sam pulled the onesie out of her hand, tucked it back and slammed the paper shut. "That's enough, stop."

"You're so nervous today." She pushed the box into Mikaela's hand, who thanked her shyly and put the box on the windowsill for now.

Meanwhile, the Autobots watched the conversation outside the window.

"The parents are a really annoying" Optimus said, and Ironhide suggested to eliminate them. "Ironhide, whose side are you on? It's discrimination."

"I'm not discriminating them," the weapons expert defended himself. "I kill them with honor, as befits a highly developed species."

"Someone's comung," Optimus remarked as he saw the movement on the curtain. "Quick, hide."

"Ha." Ironhide headed for the road. "Watch this, rookies. Hide is my middle name." The others remarked that they had never seen him use a middle name before. "Of course not. Because it is 'hidden'."

He had a point. Any blind man would have found the Autobots parked in the most unusual places. Optimus stood on the porch. Jazz in the middle of the backyard path. Ratchet parked himself on the roof of the converter and Bumblebee in the far too narrow tool shed where nobody would have been able to park backwards this way without knocking anything over.

But it was only Sam who opened the window and called out quietly for Optimus. When he spotted the footprints and tire tracks in his father's garden, it was just the next shock. "Isn't it enough that you've got me running into debt?"

Optimus appeared before him at the window and apologized as politely as he could. Once they'd saved the world they would work something out. At least they'd live to be in debt, a luxury the homeless Autobots could only dream of.

Sam looked over every Autobot. "And this, do you call this hiding?" He counted. One was missing. "Where is Ironhide?"

"Over here," his voice sounded from the street. "I disguised myself as a parking offender."

In fact, he was parked almost neatly on the side of the road, only his left front wheel was standing twisted on the line. Ingenious. No one would believe that an alien robot behaved so inconspicuously conspicuously.

"At least that helps you." Sam handed Optimus the glasses. The leader of the Autobots accepted them with relief and activated his own lasers, which he used to scan the cybertronic glyphs engraved in the glasses. They were not coordinates. It undoubtedly said, "He who reads this is stupid."

Sam waited impatiently. "So? Now with the coordinates, can you find the Allspark and save the world? Can you get out of my life before you cause more chaos? Can you get off my father's lawn and my mother's flowers?"

Optimus operated his memory at full capacity for a split second, searching for the best way to transmit this complicated information to the boy's simple brain. "Yeah, thanks Sam. Good night."

Sam nodded slightly annoyed and closed the window.


	3. Chapter 3

Not long after Sam had reported the successful handover to Mikaela, moaned about his failed future and had to be comforted by her, there was a knock at the front door and shortly afterwards his father called for him. "Sam, there's a gentleman here to arrest you for Ebay fraud."

"If this is another one of your jokes," Sam grumbled on the way downstairs, but found that his father was telling the truth. Well, half of it.

The man standing in the doorway in a black suit was just clearing up the fact that Sector 7 was the name of his institution, not his personal name.

"No, that's all right." Ron tapped the visitor on the shoulder. "Parents sometimes have a strange sense of humor when it comes to choosing their children's names." He turned his head to Sam. "Right, Sammy Jam?" Behind which Mikaela promptly appeared. "Oh, I'm sorry, sweetheart. You would have found out soon enough," Ron added a gloating apology.

"Found out what?" whispered Mikaela, but Sam waved away to postpone the explanation about what an asshole his father was until later.

Who turned back to the man in the suit. "No, my son would never do anything like that. Sneak a little weed, run a red light, maybe hide age-inappropriate magazines under his bed. But going on the Internet and earn a little money? No, my kid wouldn't do that."

"Daaad!"

Luckily the visitor himself realized how fruitless the conversation with Ron was and pushed the older man aside. He lifted a paper in Sam's direction. "Is this your Ebay page?"

"Ladiesman?" Ron shook his head. "This can't possibly be my little Sammy Jam." Before Sam could groan with annoyance, the agent silenced his father with a look and made another commanding move with the page facing Sam.

On the page Sam recognized his shop page with the blocked auction of the glasses, whose price of over ten million dollars was still visible. "Um, yes?"

"We have reason to believe that the activity among your articles indicates an illegal hacker attack. We're taking you into custody for further investigation and protection. You and your family." His eyes flitted to Mikaela. "Who is she?"

"That's his fiancée!" Judy squealed gleefully, whereupon Mikaela and the rest of the family were taken to some cars that drove away with the people.

At some distance blue optical sensors had observed the whole thing. Since his previous plan had failed, Optimus decided to follow the humans.

"Well hopefully this works out better than your other plans," Jazz moaned.

The Autobots rolled out as a convoy. Except for Ironhide, the pro who thought it was too obvious and who played a youthful racer by pushing past the Autobots.

Optimus told the others the rest of his plan: "If nothing else helps, I'm going to merge with the Cube to destroy it. Don't worry, I'll somehow be resurrected, just like I always am."

But Ratchet had him pegged. "You're just trying to avoid the cleanup post-war."

Optimus sighed. Gotcha. He took his time with the answer. "Well, actually, I'm avoiding Megatron's rants when he pays for the damage and then makes fun of me."

Sam and Mikaela were in the car with two agents. One of them steered the car silently. The other turned to them.

"And what is your name? Sector 8? Area 7?" It sounded funnier coming from his father's mouth. Sam felt stupid. No, wait, he said to himself. He was a member of an intelligent species, no matter what anyone else said. Who sometimes suffered from a little bit of Imposter Syndrome. It could happen to the smartest of creatures. Surely.

"No," Mikaela suddenly threw in. "This is Simmons, Mall Boy. Or rather, S. Mall Boy."

"Very funny, you sexy girl."

Mikaela's eyes drifted scornfully over the agent. "Sorry, too skinny for my taste."

The agent gave her a scornful look and turned to Sam. "We need to know everything you know. Did any of the buyers contact you on eBay? We need details of meetings, correspondence, everything."

"But in exchange, you take care of my problem with eBay. The demands for payment and the bad reviews have to go away. Mikaela, do you want anything?"

She shook her head. "I'm a woman, I get everything I want anyway."

"The guy's a blackmailer," Simmons muttered to himself and moaned softly. "Blackmailers are sexy."

While Sam told about his encounter with the police car, the agents took the two teenagers to a dam where, as it turned out, they kept everything the Autobots and Decepticons had been looking for all along. In a hall behind yard-thick concrete was Megatron, whom Sam recognized from Optimus' hologram theater - even though people claimed his name was NBE1. In the other hall was a small cube, roughly the length of a forearm, in a large glass case full of tools and measuring instruments.

Sam asked if that was dangerous, wasn't it?

The agent who showed them around and gave them a little retrospect replied, "We thought it was safer to have the two things in one place." Yeah, right.

"We brought NBE1 here in 1934 and since 1935 he is in cryostasis."

Megatron still put one foot in front of the other bluntly. His rage made him forget his sense of time. He would never tell that to anyone. Good thing Starscream wasn't here.

"How much further is it?" he moaned. They had promised him the Allspark. They said they couldn't fly there, top secret and all. So he was forced to walk.

One of the agents stuck his head out the side window of the car. "3,000 miles."

"Unicron's curse come upon you!" Those underdeveloped creatures. Actually, he was more angry with himself for miscalculating the landing path. How embarrassing for a natural machine intelligence.

The soldiers looked at each other and whispered, "Who is this Unicron?" "I have no idea. Is he another non-biological alien?"

Megatron added: "In other words, I will wipe you all out for this."

He had been telling them that for hours to make them realize how important it was to him, but nobody took him seriously. Instead, one of the higher-ups whined, "Can someone shut up NBE1?"

"My name is Megatron and I'll talk all I want!" These underdeveloped creatures couldn't even remember his name.

"Oh, and just before he reached the Allspark, we shock-froze him. But don't worry, our security measures prevent him from ever getting his revenge on us."

Sam was just about to ask if it hadn't occurred to a Decepticon at some point that there were people in black suits going in and out of that place when the power went out.

"Hmm, what a nuisance," muttered the agent. "Somebody blew the power out." Of course, the power was necessary to keep Megatron well cooled, so he began to thaw.

Another agent approached the first one and whispered, "When NBE1 wakes up, don't let him see us with that cube."

They looked at each other like they were exchanging thoughts. Then they looked at Sam at the same time. A few moments later, the Allspark was placed in his hands. "Here, you take this."

They assured him it was the best way to solve all his eBay problems in one go and sent him out where, luckily, he ran into the Autobots who agreed to help him escape.

He asked Optimus, "Wouldn't you rather take the Allspark? It belongs to your species and everything." "No, too dangerous. It's better if you hold it. Don't worry, we'll always be close by."

Since people were storing Megatron in the middle of a large hall instead of in a dedicated cold room or something, he pretty quickly thawed enough to blow up the rest of the ice himself, throwing away the people crawling on him and saying his name aloud. "I am Megatron. Not NBE1, Megatron." He hated it when people didn't know his name, and the planet's inhabitants were so underdeveloped, even after repeating it several times they didn't get it.

He transformed and flew out over the heads of the little people. "The night shift will take care of that."

The leader of the Decepticons ranted softly. "Those underdeveloped creatures. What's so hard about Megatron? I even dropped a syllable."

He flew just above the water towards the dam, pulled up, transformed in midair and landed on the ground in one cool jump.

Starscream, who saw him coming, landed nearby to greet his old master.

"Where is the cube," Megatron asked, struggling not to let Starscream's presence spoil his joy about his regained freedom.

"Oh," he replied sarcastically. "You went off alone many star cycles ago to look for the Allspark on this rock and ask ME where it is?" He nodded to the horizon. "I thought the humans had taken it away with your permission. Would have been too embarrassing if they had escaped you."

Megatron spat angrily. "I am surrounded here only by incompetence."

Starscream whispered, "Which one of us miscalculated on the flight path to the Allspark? Megatron, your mistrust breaks my spark."

"Bring me the cube," Megatron commanded. "And shut up or I will break your spark for good."

Outside on the road towards the city the Autobots encountered a group of Decepticons who immediately engaged them in a fight. However, it didn't take long for almost everyone to stop and watch in amazement as Optimus and Bonecrusher fought.

First the Con tore him off his feet with a stormy hug, with Optimus falling backwards and pushing his back through to form a bridge over the road through which the cars could pass unharmed. He then rallied backwards through a roll that turned into a cartwheel so he put his feet next to other cars instead of on top of them.

Barricade, Brawl and Blackout had lined up at the side of the road to watch. After Optimus' last stunt they held up cardboard signs with their ratings. Brawl and Blackout gave 5 and 6 points, Barricade only 2 and a disapproving head shake.

Even Bonecrusher had already noticed that his opponent's focus was somewhere else and enjoyed deliberately pushing him towards people or buildings. He pushed Optimus over the edge of the road and Optimus landed on the one below, holding up his head to protect a car where a mother was sitting with her son.

3, 3 and 1 points were shown by the cardboard signs. Barricade was generally not satisfied. "Once again, he is completely exaggerating." The other two nodded in agreement. "He'd better worry about himself. After all, his species is endangered and there are enough humans."

A shot from Bonecrusher threw Optimus back, slammed him into a truck that was backing up and completely blocked the road, then to make matters worse, another truck that couldn't brake in time crashed into the first one and the chaos was complete.

The signs showed 3, 2 and 8 points. Astonished Brawl and Blackout looked at Barricade, who laughed himself to pieces and gave Optimus a thumbs up. "If you knock down a building next time, I even give you a 10."


	4. Chapter 4

When landing between the skyscrapers of the city, Megatron noticed his mistake too late and clumsily took a balcony with him to the ground. Whatever, nobody had seen it.

Starscream's laughter resounded from a block away and proved him wrong. Megatron tried to silence him with an angry look. "First the crash to Earth, now this." Starscream was amused. "How can you miscalculate a landing out of less than 100 klep? Were you drunk again?"

Megatron acted as if that was on purpose. "Why should I care about those piles of the worms? We're about to tear it all down anyway." The stupid magnetic field of this planet.

Starscream didn't buy a word he said. "No wonder human technology is always causing problems."

"One more word and I make you scrub the Nemesis."

While Starscream was busy getting his snickering under control, Megatron checked the situation. Nearby his people were engaged in fighting. Wait a minute, that sounded like Autobot guns? Megatron was surprised there were any left. "How many Autobots are left?" he demanded to know from Starscream. "One hundred? Two hundred?" "Five." "Oh." What a shame. That meant the Autobots were under species protection.

With the equivalent of a sigh through his cooling system, Megatron sent a message: "To all Decepticons. Anyone who kills an Autobot will do the paperwork themselves." This had no effect on the sound of gunfire that could be heard. Most likely his people were already holding back, lest they accidentally wipe out the endangered race.

Now Megatron stepped into view around the corner of the building to get the reverence he deserved.

Instead, when a yellow Autobot medic spotted the Decepticon leader, he asked, "Who are you?"

Megatron was about to punch his fist through the nearest skyscraper, but he was unwilling to pay for damage he had caused in such an undignified way. "Don't they even teach you my name at the Autobot Academy?" he ranted and it got quiet on the street for a moment. Then a thought crossed his mind and he spitefully added, "Do you even have an Autobot Academy anymore, or did the last one have to close due to a lack of participants?" He took a dignified pose. "My name is ..."

Then a black Autobot shouted in between: "It's Starscream! Retreat!"

Stunned, Megatron followed their gaze to his second-in-command, who had transformed to a F-22 jet and flew low over the houses in preparation for an attack.

Enough. Megatron's patience had run out. The next one who got in his way had to die, or Megatron would suffer a short circuit.

So he turned to his side when he heard his name. "Oh, that's Megatron." It was a relatively small, grey Autobot pointing his puny cannon at the leader of the Decepticons.

"Hey, Tiny." Megatron majestically folded his arms across his chest. Finally, someone responded with the proper respect. He savored the moment. "I'll give you one chance. If you shoot me ..." Then the impact of a ridiculous bullet hit him and he finally let his self-control go.

"Tiny. Come out of the picture."

When Megatron's processor had cooled down a bit, he asked Soundwave to start requesting the paperwork that the death of the grey Autobot would cost him. "It was self-defense," he declared, as a precaution.

But of course nobody believed him, especially not his intelligence officer. It was his job to know the truth.

"Thank you very much, Lord Megatron," he instead sent first. "For striking down my greatest rival, though I would have liked to do it myself. I am now certain to be number one in the charts."

"I will receive a free, autographed copy of your next album. You dedicate a song to me. And I get a backstage pass to your next tour."

"Anything you want. As long as you don't ask us to use your face as the Decepticon logo. We don't want to scare off the new recruits."

Megatron fought back a tantrum, pretending to not have received the message.

Optimus marched through the streets followed by a group of soldiers who diligently helped him attack the Decepticons. In the Cons' self-defense more human buildings were destroyed than anything else, but what could they do?

Megatron confronted Optimus and his new entourage. "You still fight for the weak."

"You mean: the weak are fighting for me."

The Decepticon leader exposed his engines and slammed Optimus off his feet with a swift acceleration. "Humans don't deserve to live."

Optimus punched him in the face. "You're just mad because they used you as a calculator. Get over it."

"Wait till they freeze you and saw you open so you know what that feels like."

A few blocks away, Megatron crashed into a building with Optimus as a shock absorber. Where they could smash each other in the face undisturbed.

Optimus apologized to the frightened people whose walls he had damaged before turning to Megatron again.

The leader of the Decepticons was only moderately impressed. "I'm always surprised how easily you convince the locals to go to war for you."

"You could do that, you just have to be nice."

"I tried talking to them. They never listened to me."

"In their language? Or Cybertronian?

Megatron paused and tried to remember. That could explain a lot.

Then his red optics spotted a little boy running with the Allspark into a large building with white statues on the roof. "Stop, boy!"

No response except Optimus cheering the human on.

"Shut up." Megatron shot Optimus with his fusion cannon through three tall buildings. That would keep Optimus busy with apologizing for a while.

Megatron repeated his command again in Earth language and followed the boy.

Sam rushed up the stairs, hearing Megatron's voice thundering through the hall below: "Give me the Cube, boy, and you may live on as my pet."

"Oh, no," Sam howled and sprinted down the long hallway. "Not Starscream's job."

He ran out onto the roof, a bare concrete surface framed by the white statues. Sam saw no other choice but to hide behind one of the statues and climbed around it carefully, avoiding looking down.

Megatron's mighty steps reached the roof. Of course he was not fooled by Sam's hiding place. Sam expected an attack at any moment, but the footsteps stood still and Megatron spoke up.

"It was Prime, wasn't he? He told you I wanted to destroy your planet, looking at you with his big blue optics, didn't he? Like this?"

Sam heard a thud and carefully looked around the statue: Megatron had dropped to one knee in imitation of Optimus' pose. Sam quickly pulled his head back as Megatron rose and took another step towards the boy.

"I do not discuss my plans with Optimus. How is he supposed to know what I want?"

Sam did indeed find it strange how Optimus had been able to tell him the story in the ice cave. What was the meaning of that?

"Let me guess: He told the story again that I'm the bad guy who wants to destroy everything," continued the leader of the Decepticons. "Because he doesn't want your human mind to face the complexity of the truth." Ouch, that hurt. Sam lowered his heated forehead against the stone of the statue. Megatron was right, that's exactly what the Autobots had implied when they first met.

Megatron went on to say, "These weaklings, they do it all the time. They are so few and the first thing they do on new planets is to get the natives on their side. I'm still waiting for the day when one of your less developed species comes to hear both sides before judging."

Damn it, the robot was right. Sam had interfered in their war and helped the Autobots when they had asked him to, without insisting on knowing the exact background, instead of being fobbed off with "it's complicated".

Oh, but Megatron was wrong about the less developed stuff. Sam was perfectly capable of understanding the situation.

Careful not to throw himself off balance with his own breathing, he shouted, "Then ... are you not planning to destroy the planet?"

"Earth is filled with my descendants, why should I destroy it? All this is already mine. Besides, haven't you seen our advanced weapons technology? I have thousands of warriors under my command. We do not need the Cube to conquer your planet, but we need it to rebuild our home. So we don't have to find another one. On your Earth, for example. Now get down from there before you fall."

Megatron could've just flicked the statues to bring Sam down with them, but he didn't. The boy looked at the situation and thought it was a good idea to keep the conversation going for now. Preferably at a better place than balancing along the edge of a precipice. "Okay, I'm coming."

Sam carefully pushed one foot further around the statue. Damn, how did he get up here? Because of the Allspark, which he had clamped onto his chest, Sam leaned too far back. He reached for the statue with his free hand, but his fingertips slipped off.

"No!" shouted Megatron in reflex and reached forward to grab the boy. In doing so, he tore the iron ball forward at its chain that struck the roof, damaging the statues in the process. Instead of helping, Megatron sent a rain of broken stones after him.

Optimus was already there and caught Sam with a jump in the air, then he jumped down the wall of the house like Spiderman. "Megatron is so ..." clumy he tried to say, but then he slipped and fell the rest of the way down to the street with Sam. Megatron jumped after them.

Optimus hit the ground hard and took most of the impact to protect Sam. Shortly thereafter Megatron fell down in some distance, as he had miscalculated again on landing. How embarrassing. He made it look like an accident in the aftermath of the fight.

All around Megatron small human feet were picking themselves up like ants, panicked to get away from him. Just as he was about to jump back into the fight, his optics fell on a young woman with dishwater blonde hair. In one hand she was holding a piece of paper folded twice with scribbles on it and a pen, while she tried to sneak out of his field of vision.

"I know you, human," Megatron said to her as he zoomed in on her face and analyzed each feature. No doubt about it. "You made one of my children permutation sorting, as if we machines had nothing better to do."

She threw her hands in the air, apologetically. "That was for the course. I don't like permutation sorting either."

"And you always make fun of me in those stupid stories."

"No no, it's not like that. Let me explain. A few years ago, I was out late one night, half past one at a lonely train station ..." Megatron flicked the woman away, causing her to fly high into the nearby river.

Sam pulled himself up, still clutching the Allspark tightly. Megatron could reach him with outstretched arm, but he just looked at him calmly, waiting. The boy turned to Optimus. "Tell me the truth. You don't think humans are intelligent, do you?"

"Now is not the time for this."

Megatron interfered. "Yes, there is time. Tell him the truth, brother."

Both robots lay still, seemingly battling it out with glances. Sam pushed to get an answer from Optimus. "We have a language. Writing. Complex, abstract thought processes. What are your criteria for intelligence?"

It was quiet and no one jumped in to continue the fight. After further hesitation, Optimus explained sincerely: "You fail even the simplest of tasks, such as multiplying two twelve-digit numbers with each other without any tools. You need minutes to hours to memorize a kilobyte of text and when you recall it, it is not the same as before. Your language consists of a single stream of information, which is a long way out and cumbersomely coded. We have insects on Cybertron that have more FLOPS than you. You are pre-intelligent at best."

Sam was stunned. The Decepticons had seemed so brutal to him. Could it be possible they acted like that out of desperation over their impending extinction? Had they been misunderstanding them all along?

The boy turned to Megatron: "If you have the Cube, will you leave our planet peacefully? Return to your home planet with all your warriors? Renounce sending an army of lawyers to sue us for false imprisonment and rape?"

Megatron rolled the optics annoyingly. "All right. If you guys learn my name. I want you to name a mountain after me as a token of your commitment."

"Sam, no." Optimus tried to stop him and tried to grab Sam, but he had already left the range of the robot arms as a precaution. "You don't know what you're doing. He will use the mountain to annoy me with sexual jokes. Mount Megatron - don't you see that?"

"Megatron, I bring you the Cube. Please take it in peace and ..." Shortly before Sam reached the robot with the red optics, he stumbled over a pipe protruding from the destroyed road. Sam fell forward with outstretched arms. The Allspark in his hands poked into Megatron's chest and, under the surprised gaze of everyone present, melted out Megatron's spark, leaving a glowing hole. Too late Sam pulled back his hands in shock, but they were already empty. Lifeless the leader of the Decepticons fell to the ground.

Sam turned around to Optimus, eyes wide open, empty hands spread out in a gesture of bewilderment. He had destroyed the most valuable artifact of the Transformers, he had not wanted that.

Optimus sighed, "We better keep this to ourselves."

Something like peace was slowly returning to the city. Now that the leader of the Decepticons was lying motionless on the ground, the curiosity of the humans gained the upper hand over their fear, because although they had already made the mistake once, they would do it again and again. Further proof that humans were not intelligent.

Sam turned when he heard his name and Mikaela fell around his neck beaming with joy. "Thanks for saving the world." He didn't dare clear up the misunderstanding. Optimus' suggestion that they kept it between themselves seemed like the better choice. Maybe in the end he was just being nice with his half-truths.

The other Autobots were also approaching the scene. Although they had fought as members of a working class against a superiority of war machines, they were doing surprisingly well. How curious.

Bumblebee held up a sign, "Requesting permission to speak, sir."

"Who gave you permission to hold up a sign?" Optimus smiled. "Just kidding. Tell me what you got on the spark."

"Can I keep the boy as a pet?"

Sam wasn't surprised to discover that Bee could speak in his own voice. Although the radio had its charms too. What a cool car. "Only if you stop pestering me all the time!" That settled it.

Soundwave sent a message to Starscream: "As Megatron's second in command, his death will bring you his duties. I've got mail for you: An indictment by the Galactic Society for the Protection of Endangered Species for the death of the Autobot. An accusation for damages to the human city. Tons of claims for the child support of human technology ..."

"You do it." Starscream flipped the position and left Earth.

Somewhere on a cliff, watching the sunset, Optimus was accompanied by a human who was only there to listen to him. Because talking to himself was a sign of an overloaded biological brain. Machines didn't do that.

"There's more to us than meets the eye," Optimus concluded his speech.

The man raised a finger and pointed to Optimus' chest armor. "May we ..."

"No, you may not saw me open to have a look."


End file.
